"You used to be-"
Able to dream. Dream of bright, cheerful days on sun kissed soils. A tiny hand growing larger in his own.
The larger hand becoming larger still.
The sweet, childhood flesh of the hand becomes calloused and the calloused fingers, eventually, confidently, stroke his stress away.
He closes his eyes just as soon as he opens them with a violent upward lurch in his bed, jolted as though electricity surges and snaps at veins and nerves. England coughs, wheezing for an eternity even as he stumbles from the sanctity of his bed, dashes along the corridors and down the stairs. He spins, ricochets. He rockets, pinioning and pivoting out to the kitchen. His heart thunders in his ear, the roar of waves against the Dover cliffs. He can faintly hear the slapping of his slippers along wood. The rushing of water.
It does not satisfy. He is thirsty- he is dying.
"England?"
England is ashen faced; he recognizes the lack of blood in his head, and the spiraling of it to limbs that have no need. America calls his name again, planted firmly in the kitchen foyer, watching with a repeated performance of 'concern'. His spectacles- Texas- are slanted.
The floorboards tip, his knees- they waver and he stumbles, instinctively slaps away the hands that reach for him then, gracefully kneels on burnished wooden planks.
America stands before him. He is a giant- a towering spire of everything England has ever come to regret and despise and tolerate and adore and desire.
His head throbs after each crack of lancing, spiking pain. Lightning lights the air. He feels his hands sink deep into the recesses of the earth, clutching at it- oh mother, please- and his nose is clogged with the rotting stench of corpses. Fire, smoke and oakum. The filthiness of sweating, dirt caked flesh. Blood beneath his cuticles. Blood within his nostrils, fluids in his eyes, rushing from his body and everywhere but the dryness of his throat.
Gray skies pour tears from up high. The droplets cause his face to lift and for all the nightmares he has seen before, this sight makes him writhe in piercing, white agony.
America's cheeks are stained.
His beautiful lips open and England rages so that he cannot hear, cannot fucking take it in, what the lovely, lonely child has tried to tell him.
'Fuck.' Isn't it, but America is persistent in yelling the bloody word at his ear and abruptly, England realizes-
He is not on American soil. Not kneeling in the mud with gurgling wounds of despair. There is a floor beneath him. He sinks.
America's large, calloused hands are on his shoulders. He says the word again and England squarely punches him in the jaw so the fool will quiet.
What a surprise it is when he does.
"You-" Should probably apologize for it. Fingertips dig at the musculature of England's shoulders because, though America has recoiled, his head whiplashes back from the fierceness of another finely honed emotive smack, his grip is unrelenting. It will bruise- it will hurt, as it already does and a part of the anglo-saxon man is reveling that he could finally land the blows his stubborn heart and pride had never allowed.
"You stupid git!"
The hands are far too warm, the floorboards absurdly cold, so England valiantly fights for his valor, tearing at the contact. He wants it off. Now, right now. America has no right to touch him let alone look at him let alone breathe within the same hemisphere as England does and now, as close as they are, it is as though their breaths come in unison.
"What?" Because America is an idiot, clearly, his reaction time is slowed- he blinks owlishly at the struggles against him and, schools himself a ludicrous expression of shock. "Hey- Hey, what did I do, huh? I was just sleeping, alright? I didn't touch a damn thing. You just came flying down the stairs like you were running a fucking marathon and then you collapsed in your kitchen. Did you-?"
He leans closer. He smells of cigarettes, of leather and of pine. Cooking oil too, perhaps, but it is subverted, a suggestion.
"-See a ghost?"
England's upper lip curls in on itself in a silent snarl.
"No… okay. Alien? No. Do you guys have aliens out here? I can't remember if I've ever seen anything about crop circ- okay, that's also a no. Seriously, England are you… Shit- wait, are you having a heart attack?"
America operates like one of his ridiculous claw machines, forcing England to rise with him. The attempts for freedom, weakened and half-hearted, go ignored as he fumbles in his jacket with one hand, clearly on the search for a cell phone.
Several sharp, sucking breaths later, England's strength has returned and as soon as America triumphantly procures his sleek little baby from the depths, it clicks forlornly against the corner of the icebox where it lands.
England's hand is still raised when he thrusts the other around America's neck, yanks him in. It is not kind, but the youth is a bull and is so thick headed, it is probably the alacrity of the action that startles him, not the pain.
The fool has no idea how much his co-worker's throat hurts. He is so infuriatingly, deliciously ignorant.
"What… the hell?" America speaks regardless, rasping as he calmly endures the crushing of his esophagus. "What'd you do th…at for? I was going …to call-"
"I know."
"You…think you…know every-… thing. Always… have."
"I do."
"Ch…"
"Let it go, Yank."
America takes one step forward. He puts his hand on England's. He stands but some few scant millimeters abreast to his assailant. Gasps. "…No."
The hand on England's shoulder is still there, gripping.
England's throat constricts. There is blood in his eyes, making him blink. Rain. Mud. It swirls, falls as though over panes of glass and through its cascading, he sees the unchanging constant blue. Spectacles. Blond hair the color of Midwestern wheat fields.
"Let me go."
"No."
"Get out of my bloody house!"
"Can'tyou're…choking…"
"Fool!"
Weight falls and with a mighty force, shoves him back so hard that his hand unlatches and he tumbles into solid, unforgiving ledges. The line of his counter slams at his spine, arousing guttural, primal howls from his throat. He cannot think clearly- there is a youth whaling blows upon him as he too contributes. Beating one another bruised and broken in his kitchen at an ungodly placeholder upon the clock.
During the coarse of the storm, the landscape begins to change. America's fine cheek bones begin to develop vivid, livid bruises. Red streams flow from his nostrils, flaring from heat and anger. His hair becomes matted from musky sweat, his glasses are severely cracked and cracking, his jaw looks strange.
Liquids cover his pursed, moistened lips.
Sitting, as his tea does, to cool.
Finally, powerful fists landing in his gut, England has recognized his thirst. What memories that make his porous skin seem so dry.
Before tea time, a visit to the attic- unintentional memoirs of an unintentionally lost child.
Teenager.
War torn young man.
Lover.
England has poise, England has grace, so he does what he does best and when the next blow comes, he carefully maneuvers around it, yanks America down by his hair and drinks.
For the love of god, he sucks it all in and feels the air flowing through his lungs. The delicacy of a fine, aging wine smoothing down his throat until the moment he must allow America to part them and inhales with deep, torso shaking pants.
"…Who are you?"
"Don't be daft." The acerbic nature of this hits America straight in the heart.
He's looking at England as though the man has sprouted tentacles out of his ears. His mouth is red, sore, inflamed. "…You're not…sick or anything?"
"No."
"Possessed?"
"No."
"You haven't- we haven't done that in years. I thought you never wanted me to touch you again after that one incident with the-"
It may pain him later, but for now, in the house of eternal rains, England drinks. He slaps America's tongue with his own, takes the fool into his mouth and consumes as much as he desires. Biting, rolling, licking. Perverse, terribly lewd things in such high contrast to the memories of a smiling, sun-haloed little boy.
To be fair, they had tarnished that innocence long ago. Though only once. One time bent to America's 'will'. In decades of uncertainty where America sang the kingdom's words and the kingdom's songs, dressed in Arthur's clothes before he tore those threads away for a high ride in the clouds. After the fact, of course, that while he cheerfully continued worshiping Arthur's lyrical muses, he was similarly beating his own drums to war tunes sung in trenches dug deep within the borders of exotic lands. Distanced from his home, bleeding, killing, killed and praying.
England hears 'what the hell' murmured irritably at his lips, but he smashes that out of the opposition- this is, is his response. Your pride, your ignorance. Your selfish lackadaisical attitude and the profoundly naïve hope that the world, despite the problems you have wrought, will heal and mend itself anew.
If America understands the message in the brutal snap at his tender bottom lip, he gives no sign of it. What occurs is merely a snorting exhale of air through bloodied pinched nostrils and the cocky wanker's boisterous laughter in England's throat.
Without hesitance or remorse, he consumes that as well. Glass knocks lightly against his nose as he counts teeth. Texas has slid forward, the nuisance, and England briefly contemplates Mexico as he shoves America's mouth away. He licks his lips, expertly, deftly, closes his teeth over the northern Texan border and lifts it away when trembling, addled fingers rise to follow but let it go. They fall to tangle in England's hair, preluding the press of burning skin alined with his neck and America's forehead is there, emanating heat where England really rather wishes he wouldn't.
Then, he feels a bob in the fool's throat, a sonorous hum vibrate there into the mouth kissing at his jugular and dandy, if it isn't questions threatening to end his respite.
"I thought-"
Many things.
Many times, many plaintive keens and hoarse throated wails. America might think, but it is not with the history England does. "How considerate- don't."